New 52" LCD HDTV has arrived!!!

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Amy's posterous

They're Here! They're Here!

My beautiful new yarn and knitting needles have arrived! I'm taking a knitting class in February with my friend Andi, and our first project is a scarf. If you know me, you would know that I have a trillion scarves in all different kinds of materials and in all colors of the rainbow. Even my coworker Jesse calls me "Scarf girl" (and my caller ID on his phone comes up as "Amy Scarf").

SO, this first project is quite appropriate and I decided to go all out and buy some sweet yarn. I went for Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted Yarn, which I found at Jimmy Beans Wool. At first I wanted to purchase the yarn from Purl SoHo, but they did not have the color ("Vera") that I wanted in stock.

I'm so glad I purchased from Jimmy Beans, though! Their customer service was awesome. They shipped my stuff the same day I placed the order and they even included a cute smiley face on my receipt and jolly ranchers! Hells yeah.

Jackie suggested I try Brittany knitting needles. They are wooden needles made out of birch hardwood, and 100% recyclable! I opted for size 7 and 8 needles since that's what I hear are the best to learn on.

I'm so excited to start this class! Now I just need to find Vinny to help wind the yarn hanks into balls. I am still refusing to buy a swift for $70. Booo hisssssss.

50 little ones

Check out these babies. I did it! I got through the first 50 squares. I had to make 50 two-round squares, and now I am on to making 49 four-round squares. I'm still learning to not crochet too tightly, which is really impacting the look of my squares (it's looking a little lop-sided in the center and I'm not too happy about it).

I've come a loooong way. I remember just around Christmas time I was cursing my way through youtube instruction videos and going through endless yards of yarn...

I deserve a drink.

Progress

I forgot to mention that I will be posting my Babette Blanket progression on my Flickr photo page. I made a specific album for it, and it'll be categorized by month. At first I was going to categorize it by week, but let's get real; you won't be seeing much progression in just 1 week! Ha!

You can find the album here.

The little ones

My amazing yarn ball winder arrived and I have finally been able to roll all the skeins I bought last week! (read: Vinny rolled my skeins. I have no clue what seemed so appealing to him about rolling yarn but I wasn't going to argue).

Before:


After:


I purchased 3 different types of yarn, both of which are 50 grams, fingering weight yarn. One large orange skein is a 100% superwash merino wool made by Malabrigo Yarn. My white, brown, and yellow skeins are made by Regia, which is 75% superwash wool. The rest of my skeins are by Happy Feet, which is 90% superwash merino wool and 10% nylon. My favorite to work with is Happy Feet, because it's so soft and easy to control on the hook. I wish I could've purchased the beautiful hand-dyed wool from Purl Soho, but I can't cough up $15-$20 per skein. All of my skeins cost between $6-$6.95 (except for the orange, it was $18. But it's double the yarn amount).

Here were the original colors I was going to work with. The green was going to be placed very sparingly throughout the blanket to give it some extra "pop"...


But then disaster struck...

Stupid ol' me didn't know that you had to roll the yarn from the hanks (the long-twisted skeins of yarn) into balls, or else they would end up in a tangled mess. So what would have been beautiful green yarn for my blanket (pictured below)...


... we ended up with this monstrosity:


I was able to salvage as much as I could, but the rest is doomed. It is so tangled and knotted in a bajillion places it can no longer be recovered.

So, no more green for my blanket :(

Luckily while I ordered my yarn ball winder, I also threw a few skeins of Palette Yarn into my shopping basket. I found a pretty shade of purple, called Hyacinth, that will substitute the green. For only $1.99 per skein, how I could I resist? I don't enjoy it as much as Happy Feet, but it'll certainly do.

Here are the colors I am currently working with, all rolled up into cute little balls:


As for actual progress, I've only made about 14 little squares ("two-round squares"). I have made more, but those ones were not good enough and have been thrown into my rejects pile. It is tedious to make sure you have the correct gauge, so that's been slowing me down a little. Luckily I'm really starting to get the hang of it now, so I'm sure I will be speeding this up pretty soon. Also, I'm having a great time doing it! Here are the little ones:



My cousin Jaime is also visiting this week, so that's put a bit of a halt to my crocheting. However, she's been quite a dear and has given me some time to squeeze in a few squares here and there. More updates to come...

2010

Happy New Year! Wow, Christmas really flew by. I'm surprised I didn't post a Christmas blog, but I've been pretty preoccupied with work and making my Babette Blanket. After much turmoil and screaming at Beth, the Crochet Youtube Lady, I finally have this crochet thing down!

Sadly, my blanket project came to a halt when I realized all my yarn was useless because most of my skeins didn't come rolled into a ball. This makes it very difficult for me to crochet because the yarn would get stuck or tangled after every few stitches.

Commence me buying a ball winder from the Internet.

Commence it being stuck at the FedEx center since it's New Years day.

So, until that ball winder ends up on my front door step, I've just been practicing with some of my "practice yarn" (as I like to call it), and have been making great progress in terms of technique, pattern reading (and memorization!), and even adding new yarn colors. Ho ho ho... I just aged 30 more years!

And, Eileen Cook was right! She told me that yarn is very addicting, and it sure is. I ended up purchasing a couple more skeins with my ball winder. I couldn't help it! The colors were dazzling and hypnotizing! I can't wait to finally start on my project! I'm also signed up for a knitting class in February.

I guess I'll also take some time to reflect on this past year: I got a dog, moved in with my boyfriend, showed him the magical wonders of Disney World, saw the STS-125 shuttle launch, spent time with my family at the beach, got my motorcycle license, went to Niagara Falls for the first time, started my first book, managed to not get laid off work, and now here I am starting this huge crochet project.

As for the past decade as a whole, I graduated from high school and college in that time span. I got my first job and am living on my own. All of these are great milestones.

Hope you had a happy new years eve, and that your hangover today is slowly getting better!